Exhibitions >
Past Exhibitions

Isaac Julien

Paradise Omeros,
2002 21 September to 23 October 2005
Vagabondia
, 2000 4 November to 4 December 2005
The Long Road to Mazatlán,
1999 20 December 2005 to 15 January 2006

British artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien effortlessly breaks down the barriers that exist between different artistic disciplines, drawing from and commenting on film, dance, photography, music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and uniting these to construct a powerful visual narrative. The first film in this exhibition
Paradise Omeros
, explores ideas of ‘créolité’ – the hybrid mental states that arise when one lives in multiple cultures. The second film
Vagabondia
is set in Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. Here a conservator imagines the hidden histories within the museum's cornucopia of curios, where the statues dream and the vagabond spirit of the Grand Tour comes back to life. The final film
The Long Road to Mazatlán
, which was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001, was filmed in Texas and is a collaboration between Julien and choreographer Javier de Frutos. Drawing on the mythologies of the American West and the loaded iconographies of the cowboy, the work references Andy Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys as well as Martin Scorsese’s
Taxi Driver
and David Hockney’s
Swimmers and Pools
, while further extending the scope and implications of notions of créolité.